BY THIS SIGN 
> WE CONQUER 




»St P.-VVHITWELL WILSON SS 




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Book TT?^ \\ i g. 



BY THIS SIGN 
WE CONQUER 



By P. Whitwell Wilson 

Parliamentary Correspondent ^^ London Daily News'' ^ 



Fifth Edition 

The Christ We Forget 

izmo, cloth . . . . net ^1.50 

Chicago Herald says : " A life of Christ which 
surpasses in reverence, profundity, clarity, keen 
insight, scholarly reference, daring devotion, fasci- 
nating pithiness and altogether overpowering force, 
anything that modern Christianity has tried to pro- 
duce." 

Dr. y. Wilbur Chaprnan says : " I consider it 
one of the greatest books I have ever read. Ought 
to be in every minister's hands. Is there not some 
way to arrange it ? " 

Two Ancient Red Cross Tales 

i6mo, boards . . . .net 50c. 

Mr. Wilson has retold in his inimitable style two 
incidents in the life of our Lord, urging believers 
to the most important of all red cross work, that of 
bringing the halt, the lame, and the blind to the 
Great Physician. 

By This Sign We Conquer 

A Note on the Strange Resurrection of 
John 3:16. 1 6mo, boards . . net 50c. 

" Will prove effectual in the work of reconstruction 
which must follow the ruin wrought by German 
unbelief and militarism." — The Christian. 




IV. Holman Hitnt, O.M. 

The Light of the World 



BY THIS SIGN 
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A Note on the Strange Resurrection of 
John-Three-Sixteen 



By 
P. WHITWELL WILSON 

Author of ^^ The Christ we Forget '* 




New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 19 1 8, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



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Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
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CONTENTS 

I 

AN OLD PASSWORD . 



• • • 



II 

THE SUPREME SACRIFICE . . . 2^ 

III 

THE ALLIED CAUSE .... 39 

IV 

THE CONCLUSIVE PEACE . . • 55 



I 

AN OLD PASSWORD 



I 

AN OLD PASSWORD 

OUR boys at the front need food 
for soul as well as body. And of 
both kinds of food, they deserve 
the best. Of this little book, I say no 
more than this— it is the best I can give to 
the boys who give all for their country. 
The best is beyond ourselves and, here, 
that best is the Friend who goes forth to 
battle with the worst of us, if we desire 
Him. I am a journalist— -what you in 
America call a newspaper man — but I see 
no reason why the Saviour of the world 
should be denied "the publicity" with 
which we surround senators and singers 
and actors. He is more interesting than 
them all. He is closer to us than them 
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all. He well deserves all that the best of 
us can ever say about Him. 

When I was a boy twenty-five years 
ago, no sermon seemed to be complete 
unless it contained a reference to ** John- 
Three-Sixteen." On both sides of the 
ocean, this little text was, beyond all ques- 
tion, the most familiar verse in the Bible. 
It was the theme of Dwight L. Moody 
and it was the theme of Charles Haddon 
Spurgeon. I well remember how one 
evangelist, with zealous ingenuity, re- 
duced it to an acrostic, thus : 

God so loved the world, that He gave 

His 
O nly Begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him 

should not 
P erish, but have 
E verlasting 
Life. 

From which he argued that these few 

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words summed up the whole Gospel or 
God's-spell that He came, in His humble 
way, to preach. As I recall these memo- 
ries, I forget about the many historic 
speeches that I have heard in our British 
Houses of Parliament, and my mind is 
carried back to a little chapel by the 
riverside, in a gray old town, northwards, 
where rich and poor sat together every 
Sunday, not many in numbers, but 
strangely united, because they trembled 
at the knowledge of their sins and re- 
joiced over God's redemption. Since 
those days I have seen much of life, in- 
cluding the seamy aspects of it, and, 
among other lessons, I have learned that 
" John-Three-Sixteen,*' which was the key- 
stone of our faith in the little chapel by 
the riverside, has gone out of fashion. I 
know not how it may be in your country 
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but, in mine, there are not many ad- 
dresses and sermons which to-day men- 
tion " John-Three-Sixteen,'* unless it be 
with a kind of apology. It is like a seed 
that has fallen into the ground and died. 
And it does not occur to us that amid the 
harrowing of war, the time may come 
when it will spring up again and yield a 
rich harvest of repentance and comfort. 

Some people dismiss " John-Three-Six- 
teen" because they say that it is only 
one of the utterances or — as they like to 
put it — "logia" of the Fourth Gospel, 
which, in their opinion, is a document 
of no value as history, being inspired 
solely by some controversy with heretics, 
whose name, at the moment, I need not 
recall. In the past, we have all been a 
little impressed by this show of erudition, 
but, for some reason or other, we are 

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to-day very suspicious of theories made 
in Germany. Whatever we may think 
of other German imports, I, for one, de- 
dine any longer to bow to the spectacled 
Teuton as an authority on Truth, and I 
refer the entire race of higher critics, one 
and all, to Louvain, Lille, and the Lusi- 
tania as facts to be explained before we 
are required, at the bidding of the Pro- 
fessors, who for half a century have Prus- 
sianized our theologians, to tear up the 
Fourth Gospel, as if the treaty or cove- 
nant between God and man were a mere 
scrap of paper. From this bad dream war 
has suddenly aroused us, and the higher 
critics of the nineteenth century will go 
the way of the early heretics, the later 
schoolmen, and the rationalists — indeed, 
of all who by pride of intellect seek to 
obscure the simplicity of our Salvation. 
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For what is the trouble with modern Ger- 
many? There has never been a cleverer 
nation or a more patriotic nation, or a 
thriftier and more orderly nation, or in 
their way a more domesticated nation. 
If, then, Germany has gone so grievously 
astray, it is solely because she has thrown 
" John-Three-Sixteen " and all the truth 
that gathers round it into the waste-paper 
baskets of her universities. She has re- 
fused to believe that God loves the world 
— all nations in the world ; that Jesus is 
God's gift to all mankind ; that without 
Him, however wise we are, we perish ; 
and that with Him, however foolish we 
may be, we have everlasting life. 

I decline, therefore, to be put off by 
this question whether these words were 
actually uttered by Our Lord or should 
be read as the comment of the evangelist. 



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Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, 
that we lift " John-Three-Sixteen " clean 
out of its niche, and put it in the middle 
of one of Paul's episdes ; what difference 
would that make to the love of God, the 
gift of Christ, and the perishing of our 
eternal life ? An argument about author- 
ship, however amusing as a way of pass- 
ing the time, will not help us when we 
have to explain why we neglect so great 
a salvation as that which is offered to us 
in Jesus Christ, Take our verse by itself, 
as— let us say — a motto on a Christmas 
card, or a book-marker, or a text in your 
bedroom ; get rid, if you wish, of the con- 
text, and it still challenges you. It still 
challenges the American people. It chal- 
lenges the League of Nations. And what 
is so serious about disbelief in these things 
is that the results, though they may not 
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follow at once, are inevitable. It was not 
for thirty years after the crucifixion of Our 
Lord that Jerusalem was destroyed, but 
the end came at last. It has taken three 
generations to de-Christianize Germany, 
but the resultant catastrophe has followed. 
Many of us think that if we close our 
Bibles, everything will go on as before. 
So it will, for a time, but nature abhors 
a vacuum, and if our faith is not to be 
*' John-Three-Sixteen," it must be some- 
thing else. And something else is certain 
to be something evil. 

Most of us have been startled by the 
capture of Jerusalem. It shows us that 
the Jews are still a race and that tHe Old 
Testament is still a book to be reckoned 
with. Its prophecies are not mere fancy 
but are substantial estimates of future 
probabilities. And I will submit to you 
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this proposition, that the Jews and their 
writers, whatever prejudice there may be 
against them, did at least contribute to 
our happiness an intense and quite unique 
behef in God. Other nations carved idols 
or painted pictures of their deities, but the 
Jews — men and women and children — did 
not need any god that they could touch 
with their hands, or see with their eyes, 
or hear with their ears. "Verily," they 
said of Jehovah, **Thou art a God that 
hidest Thyself " — yet, though hidden, they 
knew that He was with them. To Abra- 
ham, God was an intimate Friend. To 
Jacob, God was a kind of Destiny, that 
must be wrestled with and so — as it were 
— mastered at a tremendous personal cost 
To Moses, in the loneliness of the mountain, 
God was a burning enthusiasm, lighting 
up men's hearts, like the bush that flamed 
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so fiercely, yet was not consumed. To 
Joshua, God was an Armed Ally, with 
sword drawn. To David, devoted to a 
guilty passion, God was the voice of a 
prophet, saying, "Thou art the man." 
To Elijah — staggering, as our soldiers 
stagger, under the shock of earthquake, 
wind, and fire — God was the still small 
voice of courage and duty amid danger. 
To Hagar, in the desert, watching her son, 
as the lad perished with thirst, God was 
a present help — a very present help in 
trouble. That, I say, was a great insight 
by the Jews. And they have it to this 
day. Without country, without king, 
without army or navy or citizenship, and, 
alas, without their Messiah, this miraculous 
race increases and prospers, scattered but 
indestructible, because of this passionate 
faith in the presence of God. Be very 
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sure that He is near us, that He hears 
what we say, sees what we do, perceives 
what we think, understands what we 
suffer. **John-Three-Sixteen " confronts 
us, bluntly, boldly, unanswerably, with the 
fact of God. Wherever your boys may 
go, whatever tragedy may develop them, 
suddenly there flames amid the gloom 
this Personal, All-Knowing, All-Seeing 
Presence. They will find that they are 
not alone, that Another is with them. 

The very first word in this Bible of ours 
is this word, "God." We are told that 
God created the heavens and the earth. 
There were stages, doubtless, and evolu- 
tions ; it was all done, as He does every- 
thing, in order and with patience, but the 
point is that He did it. There was nothing 
made that He did not make. And He 
made it good — not merely useful and 
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workable, but, I repeat, good. The old 
world is to-day vanishing in smoke and 
it is God who must make the new world. 
We grow apple-trees for the sake of apples, 
but there is no apple without a blossom. 
And the blossom is beauty. We want air 
to breathe, but God adds the clouds, the 
rainbow, the sunrise every morning, the 
sunset every evening — a tide of glory 
sweeping round the world every day. 
About the fiercest of wild beasts, the most 
deadly of reptiles, there is this universal 
beauty which artists see as they see it in 
the tempest, the lightning, the flood, and 
the fire. When, therefore, people tell me 
that God cannot have made things good, 
because of these slums, these trenches, 
these prisoners' camps, these crimes 
against women and children, I reply that 
even in slums and trenches, and all the 
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hideous scenes of war and peace, you will 
find, as artists find, a strange mantle of 
loveliness — love-like-ness — from which you 
cannot escape, so that if there were not 
these terrible things in the world, we 
should actually lose some of the world's 
beauty and goodness. Somebody once 
declared that there was nothing to be 
admired in a skyline crossed by mill- 
chimneys. A clever painter thereupon 
made a picture of the glowing evening sun 
shedding its warm radiance around the 
stern tall towers of black brick, and touch- 
ing with splendid purple the level masses 
of rolling smoke. Even that factory town 
could not escape from the loveliness — the 
love-like-ness of God. 

And it is the same in France. Men 
make shells with terrible purpose, and then 
an unseen hand moulds and gilds those 

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puffs of smoke, as if to suggest that when 
His creation returns from our control to 
His, there is He, with His loveliness. We 
wound and we slay, but again the spirit 
rises, like that puff of smoke, and we dis- 
cover in our dressing-stations and hospitals 
wonderful glimpses of the divine Presence 
— such tenderness, such courage, such 
sympathy, such order amid confusion — 
showing again that, amid all these calam- 
ities, there is loveliness — love-like-ness— 
clinging to us like a garment. Rough 
soldiers become poets and write delicate 
lyrics. Their soul lives amid death be- 
cause amid death, there is still love. For 
it is just this love which makes the dif- 
ference between God and good. The 
good is a system, a law, a shape, a note, a 
jewel ; but God is a Being, a Person, a 
Life, a Thought, a Will. And every hour 

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of every day He is coming to us, suggest- 
ing Himself as our Friend, by hints, by 
glimpses, by whispers, so that, if we wish, 
we can see Him, hear Him, touch Him, 
and so return His love. God loved the 
world — that is our first fact. 

But the hints and glimpses and whispers 
were not enough. We are so deaf, so 
blind, so paralyzed that we do not hear, 
we do not see, we do not touch, and we 
are left amid the slum, without the sunset, 
and all our existence is as unlovely as 
those factory chimneys. To put the case 
in two words — we perish. The substance 
of us is still there, but the life, the love, the 
joy has gone. I have an old bicycle, with 
tires that are not punctured or injured in 
any way, but are quite useless, because 
the rubber has ** perished." The material 
looks all right, but it has lost its toughness 
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and elasticity, and when I wanted to ride 
the machine, I could not stir one mile until 
the tires were renewed. Men and women 
are often like that; they may be quite 
comfortable in their circumstances, but 
their hopes, their ideals — in a word, their 
happiness — has decayed. And it is just 
this capacity for happiness, for love, for 
hope, for gratitude — it is just this soul 
within us that we need in the next world. 
To conquer the whole world and lose the 
soul is thus a bargain without profit, for 
the soul is what lives on ; its health is our 
health ; its pain is our pain ; its safety is 
also ours. Jesus knew all about dangers 
to the body, but He would not have us 
afraid of these. But any influence that 
menaced the soul immediately aroused 
His utmost vigilance. 
Thus it is that God did not merely love 
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the world as Creator. He did not merely 
touch our surroundings with His own con- 
stant, subtle, and unimaginable beauty. 
He so loved the world as to give His only 
begotten Son. The hills and the streams 
and the flowers and birds are good gifts, 
which cost the Almighty His supreme ef- 
fort of Power and Knowledge. But in 
Jesus, He gave us of His very Self — His 
one, His Only Son — the Companion of 
His intimate glory — an astonishing Sacri- 
fice, that would be inconceivable if it were 
not for verses like " John-Three-Sixteen." 
For there are certain dramas that cannot 
be invented. If they are told, they must 
have occurred. The gift of Christ could 
not have been imagined, it was revealed ; 
for by revelation only could it have got 
into our language. 



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u 

THE SUPREME SACRIFICE 



n 

THE SUPREME SACRIFICE 

THE study of what theologians call 
the Trinity has puzzled all the 
philosophers and ennobled all the 
saints. I may, perhaps, put the matter 
simply by employing a familiar illustra- 
tion. Here is a rich man who before 
the war enjoyed his town house and 
his country house, his motor-cars, yachts, 
servants, fruit, flowers, and other lux- 
uries. If any one had taken these things 
from him, he would have been very 
angry, but when the world is thrown into 
chaos, he readily pays away his money in 
taxes and donations, turns his houses into 
hospitals, hands over his motor-cars and 
yachts to the Red Cross, provides for his 
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servants when they enlist, and shares his 
gardens, his fruit, his flowers, his books, 
and all that he has with the wounded. 
There, I think, you have a picture of the 
goodness of God in creation. Sea and 
land, thought and pleasure. He shared 
with us — freely, without hope of return, 
except our gratitude. 

But let us suppose that, in addition to 
his houses and yachts and motor-cars, our 
rich man had one greatly loved son — his 
constant companion, his only intimate 
relative, whose loss would leave him soli- 
tary amid his abounding riches. Do you 
not see that his sacrifice would be multi- 
plied ten thousandfold if this boy volun- 
teered, not for the usual service of the 
army, dangerous though that is, but for 
some special duty, from which he could 
not hope to escape alive ? And how in- 
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finitely would not that gift of an Only Son 
be, as it were, emphasized, if the death, so 
pitiless and inevitable, were to be of a kind 
most shameful and agonizing — no hos- 
pital, no anaesthetics, no Legion of Honor 
or Victoria Cross — but a suggestion of 
cowardice, of estrangement from the 
father, of utter and irremediable failure. 
That — in faint and distant parallel — is 
what is meant by the declaration that God 
not only loved the world, but so loved the 
world as to give His only begotten Son. 

You will ask me — I am sure, most 
reasonably — why the Almighty, enjoying 
within Himself this perfect companionship, 
should have created this Universe, so 
fraught with evil, with results so terrible 
for His Own and only Son. If you wish 
to know why a man or a woman acts in a 
particular way, you inquire first into their 
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character, and unless all our poets and 
painters and fairy-tales and dramas are 
wholly mistaken, the most powerful of all 
motives in the world is love. We feel in- 
stinctively that the love of father for child, 
of child for mother, of husband for wife, of 
sister for brother, of a sailor for his ship, a 
boy for his school, a soldier for his regi- 
ment—this all- pervasive esprit de corps ^ 
as the French put it — is the normal thing. 
Hatred is love interrupted. Vice is love 
degraded. Jealousy is love reversed. 
Justice is love vindicated. Cruelty is love 
insulted. Pride is love veneered. All 
wrongs in the world are denials of love, 
and the reason why God delights in His 
creatures is that God is Love. Why 
Florence Nightingale left her dignified 
and well-ordered home to face the miseries 
of the Crimea is as great a mystery in its 
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way as the coming or gift of Christ, until 
we remember that this woman was thus 
great because she knew the love of God in 
Christ, and was obedient to it. 

For we have here the very essence of 
what we call Romance— the Romance of 
Our Salvation. Over and over again in 
the New Testament the joy of Our Re- 
deemer in the redeemed is compared with 
the joy of the Bridegroom in the Bride. 
You cannot reduce it to logic. It is as if He 
chose us for our own sakes — for better for 
worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and 
in health— only it is not until death do us 
part, for in this case what we call " life " is 
a kind of separation, a betrothal, and death 
is union— the sight of Him as He is. And 
Romance, which is the wedding of life with 
life, ends not with itself, but is ever break- 
ing into new life, a more abundant life, 
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which, as it were, lays hold of the future, 
reaches out weak hands into eternity, which 
means that Love is a Child. As Nico- 
demus learned, we must be born all over 
again. We must be constantly telling 
others of the Gift. We must be enthusiasts, 
heroes, missionaries, martyrs, toilers, suf- 
ferers — because of the joy that is set before 
us. Like Our Lord, we must be ready to 
endure the Cross. 

I say ** we," but mean " you " — if you 
want it still more plainly, " thou " — " who- 
soever " thou art. For while God loved 
the world, which is a big place and an an- 
cient place — boundless in space and time 
— He suddenly turns His eye from every- 
thing else on to the individual, and says, 
"Whosoever." And He leaves the past 
and the future, limiting Himself to the pres- 
ent, for it is ** whosoever believeth." I like 
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that " whosoever/' yet am a little afraid of 
it. It means the native races whom we 
have taught to fight, but not always to pray. 
It means the Russian, with his icons, his 
strange enthusiasms, his curious unsta- 
bility. It means the Frenchman, with his 
Libertky Egalite, Frater^iite, It means the 
German, with blood on his hands and 
conscience. It means the American with 
his passion for citizenship, for justice, for 
freedom. And it means me. What is 
more, it means colored man and Russian 
and Frenchman and German and American 
and me, not as we were when war broke 
out or as we shall be when peace is restored, 
but as we are, locked in deadly strife. It 
means me, as I am now — at this very mo- 
ment. 

A few years ago, we would not have ad- 
mitted, perhaps, that the world was perish- 
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ing. We seemed to be growing richer — 
to be discovering new resources — to be de- 
veloping the untracked forest — to be ex- 
ploiting the unsealed mountains. But we 
now see that our discoveries and inven- 
tions were like the accumulating forces of 
a mighty volcano. Some day, the pas- 
sions of men would catch fire, a tremen- 
dous upheaval would wreck cities and 
provinces compared with which Pompeii 
was a village. Our wealth would vanish 
in the smoke. We did not foresee this ; 
we smiled at " John-Three-Sixteen " ; but it 
has come to pass. And although the erup- 
tion of this our European Vesuvius will 
doubtless spend itself, and we shall return 
to the lava-flooded and still smoking slopes 
of our warm and fertile mountain, who 
dares to suggest that we and our children 
will be immune from calamities even more 

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grievous? Let me put a case. We are 
teaching all the arts of war to China and 
Japan and India. In India and China and 
Japan there are many hundreds of millions 
of active, ingenious, intrepid people. What 
a perishing of the world there would be if, 
twenty, thirty, sixty years hence, the 
mighty and mysterious East were to de- 
velop a grievance against an unfaithful 
Christendom ! Think what would be their 
argument. "You gave us guns,*' they 
would say, "and warships, and flaming 
gas, and you inspired us with your own 
zeal for money, luxury, power, but you 
never thought of bringing to us the gift of 
Christ, which was our right as much as 
yours. You kept it to yourselves. So 
now, having received from you quite 
another type of gift, we hurl back on 
Christians the ammunition invented by 
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Christians. Since you left us to perish, we 
will take good care that we do not perish 
by ourselves." Let us make no mistake 
about it, the world has drifted into terrible 
danger. We may frame treaties, and dis- 
cuss secret diplomacy and all the rest of it, 
but if we will not bow the knee to the 
Prince of Peace, our arrangements will be 
rent asunder like gossamer, and one war 
will be only a prelude to other wars far 
more destructive. 



38 



m 

THE ALLIED CAUSE 



m 

THE ALLIED CAUSE 

SO it comes to this — whether we live in 
one hemisphere or another, we must 
perish, or we must believe. Not only 
will our beautiful buildings be threatened, 
and our pictures, and music, and games, 
and liberties, but what is far more impor- 
tant — our capacity for enjoying and ap- 
preciating these things. In Germany, the 
rejection of Christ has meant, not only a 
brutal militarism, but a sacrifice of na- 
tive genius. Literature and music and 
painting have almost ceased, except as 
statecraft, which is death to art. As the 
Apostle Paul realized, everything of value 
is summed in Our Saviour, and without 
Him everything of value is in jeopardy. 
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So that our belief touches all that we 
have, and that we do, and that we are. 
It is not a part of our life, to be lived on 
Sunday and ignored on Monday. It en- 
velops our homes, our politics, our armies, 
our factories, our farms, our theatres, our 
libraries. 

And what is believing? Our motto 
says that seeing is believing, but what 
Jesus said was the exact opposite — 
" Blessed are those who have not seen, and 
yet have believed." Faith means " seeing 
the invisible " — the soul within the body ; 
the anger behind the murder ; the avarice 
behind the fortune ; the Almighty Father 
behind the events of history ; and Our 
Lord Himself, waiting patiently at the 
door of our hearts, and ever seeking 
admittance. We used to sing a hymn, 
" There is life for a look at the Crucified 
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One," and it may be that some of us 
derived from it the impression that belief 
in the Redeemer is a casual glance, an 
emotion that passes rapidly from the sur- 
face of our hearts, a flitting vision. I 
agree that, to some extent, it is an in- 
stantaneous matter — this conversion, this 
believing. Some hearts resemble a photo- 
graphic plate which is exposed once, and 
is, in a fraction of a second, stamped 
indelibly with a picture that cannot after- 
wards be altered — just one aspect of the 
scene or person. If you are somebody 
like that, then, I bid you not to be diso- 
bedient to what St. Paul called ** the 
heavenly vision," but you should also re- 
member that, binding as was Paul's first 
view of Our Lord, changed as was his 
entire outlook thereby, he did not rest 
content with it. He devoted years to the 
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study of Our Lord from every point of 
view. He was like Holman Hunt, who 
did not give us what, without being mis- 
understood, I may call a snapshot of the 
Redeemer, but devoted all his powers to 
painting Him, over and over again, now 
as a Babe, then in the workshop, then 
again as the King of Love, with Lantern 
to guide us, and Hands and Feet pierced, 
knocking, knocking, while we slumber, or, 
waking, ask ourselves whether after all it 
is really worth while to let Him in. As 
one looks at Holman Hunt's pictures, one 
knows that he believed in Christ. It is 
in Christ that his art endures. And we 
ought, with the same perseverance, to 
study the lineaments of Our Saviour until 
they are formed, not on canvas, or with 
pigments, but on ** the fleshy tables of our 
hearts." Christ on stained glass or in the 
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form of a crucifix will not save us. We 
must admit Him to the shrine within. 
And this is what is meant by believing on 
Him. 

And if this great gift of so strong and 
faithful a Friend is worth our having, 
what right have we to complain if it 
costs us time and trouble? We spend 
thousands of dollars on making a man 
a doctor and other thousands on making 
him a soldier; it takes years to train a 
baseball player, or an engineer, or a musi- 
cian. Why should we expect to be all 
that Christ wants us to be in five minutes? 
Belief is a look — that is true ; but it is also 
a breath, it is spiritual, and when men live, 
they go on breathing. Take away their 
breath, and they perish. I am immensely 
struck by the number of churches and 
chapels that we are building, by their 
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organs and ornaments and memorial tab- 
lets, but I say deliberately that if we swept 
away the whole of these great fabrics, and 
substituted among our people a daily 
study of Our Lord's Life and Death, as 
explained to us in Old and New Tes- 
tament, we should be a humbler, more 
reverent, more truly Christian people than 
we are to-day. And, conversely, if we go 
on building our churches and embellish- 
ing them, and, at the same time, let the 
dust accumulate on our Bibles on the 
book-shelf, we shall become, infallibly, a 
less Christian people. " John-Three-Six- 
teen " does not say " Believe on the 
Church," or *' Believe on the Bishops," 
or ** Believe on the Minister." It says, 
" Believe on Him," and whatever becomes 
of our cathedrals, or our chapels, we can 
still believe on Him, since He is the Same, 
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Yesterday, To-day, and For Ever. To 
read the Bible requires some courage 
nowadays, some concentration of mind, 
some setting aside of other interests. But 
such reading is the one thing that our 
world of to-day needs. 

Which brings me to the final question — 
in what way the gift of Our Lord guaran- 
tees to us what ** John-Three-Sixteen " 
calls ** eternal life." Certain it is that 
Our Saviour came, not only to dwell, but 
to die in our midst. It had to be so. 
John Howard would never have reformed 
the prisons of Europe if he had not 
braved the jail fevers of which in the 
end he died. Father Damien would never 
have convinced the lepers of God's love 
and mercy if he had not touched their 
sores and suffered in his own body their 
terrible contagion. And Jesus could not 
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have included the dying thief in His 
" Whosoever " if He had not been his 
neighbor on the Cross. As He lived 
with us, so He died with us, and this 
sacrifice of His body and soul was the 
measure of His love. But was that all? 
When '*John-Three-Sixteen" used to be 
fashionable, we were told that He died not 
only with us, but for us, which seems to 
carry us a step further, for greater love 
hath no man than this, that a man lay 
down his life for his friends. That was 
the love of Christ; indeed, it was more 
than this, for He laid down His life for 
friends and foes alike — for the soldiers 
who pierced Him, the priests who reviled 
Him, the rabble who mocked Him, quite 
as much as for the disciples who wor- 
shipped Him. Thousands of gallant men 
have already gone forth bravely to die for 
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their country, and all honor to them. 
They think of America — how she has 
stood for justice, for liberty, for home, for 
laughter — and they sing merrily as they 
trudge forward to the trenches. Jesus 
died not for a country, not for a creed, 
not for an ideal. He died, as it were, for 
one man, one woman — whosoever he or 
she may be — and if there had been no 
more than one man or one woman. He 
would still have died, for He loved to the 
uttermost. He searched for the hundredth 
sheep — " Of them that Thou gavest Me," 
said He, ** I have not lost one." 

The fact that He was infinitely good 
while Barabbas was utterly bad made no 
difference. In offering life for life, He did 
not weigh values — not at all. The brute 
bullet has destroyed, not only some 
obscure Tommy, who was of more use in 
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battle, perhaps, than anywhere else. A 
Gladstone has fallen. An Asquith lies 
dead. A Roosevelt has been wounded. 
And we do not say, ** Whence this 
waste ? " The very best is yielded to the 
very worst, the strong to the weak, the 
upright to the fallen. Jesus died thus not 
for the righteous, but for sinners. Be- 
cause they needed all. He gave all to meet 
their need. Because their guilt crushed 
them, He bore it in His own body on the 
tree. 

For this word, guilt, is one which to-day 
is constantly upon our lips. We speak of 
guilty monarchs, guilty nations, guilty 
soldiers, and we are very certain that 
there can be no conclusive peace unless 
stern retribution is visited on the offenders. 
We are finding out that Love and Wrath 
are twin children of Justice, and we dislike 
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the conscientious objector who professes 
the one without the other. Do we seri- 
ously imagine that Our Father can love 
the world as He does without exhibiting 
what is called in the Bible " the wrath of 
God " ? Take our planet at its best. 
There is plenty of room for everybody, 
yet multitudes of us are overcrowded. 
There is plenty of food for everybody, yet 
multitudes go hungry. There is an abun- 
dance of good books and music and art 
which the few only are taught to enjoy. 
In mind and body, or both, our race is 
stunted, oppressed, defrauded. Do you 
think that God is blind? Suppose that 
you are the father or mother of a family, 
and that one of your children was a cripple. 
What would be your ** wrath " if the other 
sons and daughters denied to this back- 
ward or afflicted one his share of the 
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patrimony which was meant for all ? 
"Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least 
of these My little ones, ye did it unto 
Me," is what Jesus said — did it, mind you, 
whether it be bad or good. While we 
withhold one syllable of God's good 
tidings, with all that they mean of social 
equity, physical and mental advance- 
ment, and removal of ancient wrongs, 
from our workers, our native fellow- 
citizens — yes, and our enemies in the field 
— we may rest assured that we need 
pardon for our sins. 

And true pardon is expensive. If a 
murderer is reprieved it is not because the 
prisoner is guilty, but because his guilt in 
law is mitigated by extenuating circum- 
stances, as between man and man. What 
we need is pardon when there are no ex- 
tenuating circumstances, and this is a 
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costly matter. For we have within us a 
judge — that is, our conscience — than which 
none could be sterner, when the facts are 
fairly faced. Sometimes there is a good 
deal of argument in court, and we trust 
that our case may be obscured by mists of 
philosophy. Others of us flee from justice 
to pleasure, ambition, excitement, success, 
and so escape for a while. But there are, 
all over the world, countless men and 
women from whose minds this responsi- 
bility for evil cannot be thus thrust aside. 
Some of them torture themselves. Others 
confess to [an earthly priest. Others, 
again, believe that there is an efficient 
substitute for the true culprits in the sacri- 
fice of bulls and goats. The craving for 
some kind of atonement is instinctive to 
the whole of mankind. Even in law there 
is the principle that if an innocent man 
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suffer punishment for a crime which he did 
not commit, the guilty goes free. ** John- 
Three-Sixteen " invites us to abandon our 
philosophy, our pleasures, our ceremonies, 
as the escape from conscience, and accept 
Jesus Christ as "a Gift" — once made, for 
all people, of every time, and offered not 
by the clergy, or by the churches, but by 
God Himself. That " Gift "—living within 
us — is our eternal life. He is Prince of 
Peace — a conclusive peace — not alone be- 
tween man and man, but between man and 
God. 



54 



IV 
THE CONCLUSIVE PEACE 



IV 
THE CONCLUSIVE PEACE 

THE other day I happened to be 
discussing the future of Europe 
with a leading light in journalism 
— a man of many clubs, a wit, something, 
indeed, of a cynic — when — he had been a 
little pessimistic — he turned to me and re- 
marked, quite casually : " What we want 
is, I tell you, a religion.'* I do not remem- 
ber him mentioning such matters before, 
yet his words came naturally enough, as if 
they fitted into the conversation. " What 
we want is, I tell you, a religion ! " That 
shrewd judge of human affairs was very 
near the mark. The new map of Europe is 
doubtless a problem of great complexity 
57 



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and importance. But the great issue to- 
day is not whether we are to have a new 
map ; the new heart — that is what will 
make the difference. Will this fearful visi- 
tation leave us still with our old troubled 
relations between Catholic and Protestant, 
Capital and Labor, Frenchman and Ger- 
man, German and Russian, Russian and 
Austrian ? The map of Europe is a pen- 
mark on cardboard. But what is the 
Europe behind the map ? Touch one of 
those obscure villages with the unpro- 
nounceable names, and it bleeds, it weeps, 
it cries out in agony, it starves, it burns, it 
suffers a veritable crucifixion. God has 
His map of Europe more carefully en- 
graved on His heart than ours, and that 
map is to-day stained with blood and 
tears, and shadowed with hatred and de- 
spair. Do you imagine that your Cabinets 
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will cure this? I doubt whether any 
statesman shares your view. We fight— 
we fight hard for Justice ; but what about 
a redeeming love ? 

May I tell you a little anecdote of war 
which happens to be true ? Some French 
soldiers of the Jewish persuasion lay 
wounded in a hospital, near Paris, where 
they were tended by Roman Catholic 
nuns. Passover was coming along and 
two of these soldiers were in trouble be- 
cause they would have no unleavened 
bread with which to observe the feast. The 
sisters of mercy heard them talking and 
one of them overcame her religious scru- 
ples so far as to walk a considerable dis- 
tance into the Jewish quarter and purchase 
some of the required ceremonial food. 
She brought her gift to the men under her 
care and they were deeply touched. Hap- 
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pily their wounds healed and they could be 
discharged from the hospital. When the 
day came for bidding good-bye, they said 
to the nuns that they were grateful and 
they offered all the money that they had 
with them. The women drew back and 
answered that no money was needed — no 
money could pay for what had been done ; 
and the soldiers went away, asking them- 
selves how they could show their grati- 
tude. At last, a happy idea occurred to 
their minds. They went to a shop or 
store and invested their savings in the 
most beautiful flowers that they could ob- 
tain. These flowers they carried back to 
the hospital and gave to the sisters. 
** What are we to do with these lovely 
flowers?" enquired the sisters, and one of 
the Jewish soldiers replied, ** We want you 
to put them on your altar.*' 
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Of course, these French Jews knew little 
or nothing of Protestantism as we know 
it. To them, the altar was simply Christ. 
The Crucifix was simply Christ's emblem. 
It was to Christ that they paid their due. 
It was Christ's love, revealed in those 
women, that constrained the Jewish heart. 
The quiet tact which did not argue but 
respected even an imperfect faith did more 
to win those men than centuries of perse- 
cution, which indeed had repelled their 
race. Tender touches of the hand are 
what we need to-day for healing, only it 
must be a pierced hand. However light 
the touch, the hand must have first felt the 
blow. Men and women are not worthy of 
Christ unless Christ has precedence over 
father and mother and even wife and chil- 
dren. Given that kind of loyalty, and a 
very slight hint will carry the fortress. A 
6i 



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very brief word will bring tears to the 
eyes. A very gentle command will be 
followed by a very expensive obedience. 
When any one has himself paid his foot- 
ing, he has unlimited call on others. Our 
Saviour is our Saviour just because Him- 
self He could not — rather did not save. 
He did not spare Himself and therefore 
He does not spare us. 

As I jot down this last page or two, 
there arises before my imagination a bat- 
tle-stricken landscape — let us suppose that 
it lies somewhere in Galicia. There, before 
our eyes, stretches a great military high- 
way, amid desolation and ruin, but by 
some strange chance the guns have spared 
a shell-scarred shrine, under which still 
rises, silent and sorrowful, the Figure of 
Our Saviour. The tide of invasion ebbs 
and flows, leaving tragic flotsam and jet- 
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sam around that solitary symbol of the 
Crucifixion. An Austrian falls, wounded 
and dying, beneath the shadow of the 
Cross. The fortunes of the conflict change, 
and a Russian, also struck in the mortal 
part of him, is laid near the Austrian. The 
thunders of the artillery recede. The two 
men — friend and foe — lie lonely in the dusk 
of the day and the sunset of their earthly 
lives. They have no common language, 
but between them there seems to be an 
Unseen Interpreter. A drink of water — 
yes — share it with me ; it is our last. Cig- 
arettes — yes — here are two ; one for thee, 
one for me. The darkness deepens ; they 
look up to Him who died. And then they 
turn to one another with a great wonder in 
their starded eyes ; anger has gone, pas- 
sion has cooled, hand grasps hand, and 
arm is linked with arm. For they have 
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seen Him who, if lifted up, draws all men 
unto Him, and seeing Him, they say, each 
in the tongue his mother taught him : 

" He loved us both J* 

And over them rises in splendor of 
eternal truth the despised and forgotten 
message of " John-Three-Sixteen.*' 



printed in the United States of America 



64 



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